By Bob Marshall

A press release from the Department of Interior last week held some of the best news in recent years for sportsmen—and the quality of life of all Americans: After decades of steady declines, the number of hunters and anglers in the U.S. showed significant increases over the last five years.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2011 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation showed the number hunters and anglers increased 9 and 11 percent respectively, part of the 38 percent of all Americans who participated in wildlife-related recreation. That was an increase of 2.6 million participants from the previous survey in 2006. A Service spokesperson said the survey, which has been done every five years since 1955, last showed an increase was in the late the 1980s — which means we've halted a 30-year slide.

By Bob Marshall

 
In the coming weeks, media groups will be publishing and broadcasting special reports marking the second anniversary of the start of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. But what Ryan Lambert and other Louisiana coastal sportsmen and guides want the nation to know is that the spill isn't over.

"The oil and gas might have stopped flowing, but the spill is still going on for us," said Lambert, who runs Cajun Fishing Adventures in Buras, La. "We're still seeing the impacts every day.

"My fishing business is still way down. We still see some (isolated) patches of oil, some tar balls on the beach, some dead birds and dolphins.

"BP likes to say they made it all right. The spill is over. Everything is cleaned up. They're wrong. It's not over, and it probably won't be over for years. And that's when we'll finally know how much damage it did."

By Bob Marshall

New Mercury Rules Good News for Fish, Wildlife and People

The Environmental Protection Agency this week issued the long-delayed and debated "Mercury and Air Toxics Standards(MATS)" for power plants. The standards will require reductions of air emissions of mercury and air toxins harmful to humans as well as fish and wildlife habitat. It means that 40 percent of the nation's 1,100 coal fired power plants not using advanced pollution controls, will be required to upgrade to meet the new standards over the next three to four years.

Power plants are the largest remaining source of toxic air pollutants (mercury, arsenic, cyanide) and are responsible for half of the mercury and 75 percent of the acid gas emissions in the United States. When fully enforced, the new rules could reduce the presence of those air pollutants by 90 percent.

By Bob Marshall

$615 Million Cut from Conservation

Sportsmen got a sneak preview of how much Congress values their issues earlier this week, and it wasn't pretty: House and Senate appropriators agreed to cut $615 million from key fish and wildlife conservation programs that support public hunting and fishing--not to mention the overall quality of human health.

The cuts were contained in the 2012 “minibus” spending bill, so-called because it will only keep the government running another four weeks, rather than a regular "omnibus" spending bill which would have provided funding through the end of the fiscal year. 

Among the drastic cuts announced:

• Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program cut by $35 million.

• Wetlands Reserve Program cut by approximately $200 million.